2006-02-17 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- California lawmakers are asking for a permanent ban on drilling in federal waters off the state's coast as the Bush administration and Congress make a major push this year to expand offshore oil and gas development.

California's two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, introduced a bill Thursday that would block all new drilling in federal waters, which begin 3 miles off the state's coast. A federal moratorium now bars drilling off California and a dozen other states, but it must be approved by Congress each year.

"This bill will finally provide the permanent protection against future drilling that Californians have demanded for a generation," Boxer said.

The new measure is a response to an aggressive move by the administration and federal lawmakers to increase domestic supplies of energy -- especially natural gas -- by opening up coastal areas that have been off-limits to development.

The Interior Department announced a five-year plan last week that would open up new areas of the eastern Gulf of Mexico off Florida and study the potential for oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Bristol Bay and off the Virginia coast.

Pro-drilling lawmakers have introduced a series of bills this year that would increase offshore production.

But Domenici faces opposition from Florida lawmakers. Florida's two senators, Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Mel Martinez, have introduced their own bill that would allow drilling in a portion of the 181 area. But it would also create new buffer zones to keep oil rigs at least 150 miles off the state's coast.

The Florida lawmakers' bill would also extend the federal moratorium on offshore drilling that protects California and other states until 2020.

The oil and gas industry has been trying to convince states to drop out of the federal moratorium. House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, and other lawmakers have introduced legislation to give states a 50 percent share of oil and gas royalties if they allow drilling in federal waters off their coasts.

But Charter noted that similar efforts to open new offshore areas to development were blocked by Congress last year.

"Every time the oil industry has tried to gain drilling access in sensitive coastal waters, the backlash in Congress has been huge and bipartisan," he said.

The measure by California lawmakers also seeks to undo a key provision of the energy bill passed by Congress and signed by the president last July, which allowed a seismic inventory of oil and gas resources in the Outer Continental Shelf. The bill would prohibit the inventory from being conducted off California's coast.

Environmentalists say the powerful seismic air guns used to assess oil and gas deposits beneath the ocean's floor have been shown to harm whales and other marine species. But supporters argue the seismic tests are not harmful and are needed to determine the full extent of U.S. energy supplies.